United Airlines is Covering The Cameras in Their In-Flight Entertainment Systems

In February, a big discussion about privacy entered the travel arena: why do airlines have webcams built into their in-flight entertainment systems?

While many airlines claimed that the webcams are not operational, not all travelers were satisfied.

United Airlines has stepped up to appease their customers by covering the cameras in the entertainment systems embedded in the backs of the airline’s premium seats.

Buzzfeed became aware of this when Sri Ray, a former site reliability engineer at Buzzfeed noticed stickers covering the camera lenses on a recent United flight.

Last month, The New York Times reported that the airline had been considering covering these cameras with plastic or stickers and it seems like United has followed through.

In a statement, a United Airlines spokesperson said: “As with many other airlines, some of our premium seats have in-flight entertainment systems that came with cameras installed by the manufacturer. None of these cameras were ever activated and we had no plans to use them in the future, however we took the additional step to cover the cameras. The cameras are a standard feature that manufacturers of the system included for possible future purposes such as video conferencing.”

Right now, United is reportedly the only airline who has made this move, though Delta told The Verge that it will soon be building its own entertainment systems and is considering building them without cameras, a component that they don’t need and customers don’t seem to want.